I find cooking and eating more fun than writing... Still, now and then I manage to blurt something out. Enjoy!

July 20, 2013

Whenever paleo or low carb is mentioned there is usually someone who says that they couldn't do it because it would limit their cooking too much. After all, meat and veg can only be combined in so many ways, right?

Well, I certainly don't agree, and in my hands I hold two very recently published cookbooks packed with paleo recipes aiming to prove that point. About 600 odd recipes between them, ranging from snacks and starters to gorgeous seafood, slow-cooked meats, and desserts.

The aptly named "500 Paleo Recipes" by Dana Carpenter and Arsy Vartanian's "The Paleo Slow Cooker" (which comes with the catchphrase "Health, gluten-free, gourmet cooking made easy" in what I assume is an attempt to emphasize that paleo doesn't have to mean boring) were both sent to me by The Aurum Publishing Group, so in the interest of transparency I want to make clear that I haven't paid anything for them.

Both of the books follow a similar structure, part educating the reader on the health benefits of "eating clean", part dispeling the myth of healthy cooking being monotonous and bland, and of course presenting a variety of really interesting paleo recipes.

So far I have only read the introductory parts of the books, and skimmed through the recipes. While they both seem very thought through and packed with great tips and dishes I must say that The Paleo Slow Cooker is the one that has me most excited. Why? It is hard to get excited by a cookbook without pictures... 500 Paleo Recipes doesn't have a single photo in it while The Paleo Slow Cooker takes the more typical approach with recipes interspersed with full page mouthwatering photos.

That said, having sampled Dana Carpenter's work before, in the shape of "1,001 Low-Carb Recipes" (another cookbook without photos) I know that her recipes are usually clear and easy to follow, and often delicious. We have a few favourite dishes constantly recurring in our kitchen that are courtesy of 1,001 Low-Carb Recipes. So while Dana Carpenter's cookbooks don't seem the most inspirational, they certainly deliver on usefulness, creativity and variation.

In her own words:

"I come to the whole thing, as I did to low carbing, from the perspective of a cook. I want the widest range of flavours and textures I can possibly get while enjoying the benefits of dietary discipline."

Since I apply a philosophy of "Everything in Moderation" to my low carbing, and I too derive a lot of pleasure from trying different types of foods and cooking styles, I certainly agree with that aspiration!

The introduction to 500 Paleo Recipes, talking about what paleo is and why it is good for you, is really good. Without getting preachy, technical or boring (and acknowledging that "paleo" means a lot of different things to different people...) Dana Carpenter manages to not only explain why adopting some of the paleo thinking might be the most important health choice in your life, she also points out that the dangers of sugar isn't because of the substance itself, it's a matter of dosage.

Think about it. The human body and digestive system evolved in a world where refined sugar and processed foods didn't exist. If you wanted a sugar rush you had to consume punnets of ripe berries (or several meters of raw sugar cane...). Belly ache would stop you over consuming. Today you drink one super sized cup of Coca Cola at McDonalds and get more sugar in you than the average hunter gatherer managed to consume over the course of several weeks...

Given the lack of photos in one, and the high production value of the other, I would expect The Paleo Slow Cooker to be much more expensive than 500 Paleo Recipes, but at £12 and £9 respectively on Amazon the price difference is surprisingly small.

What I intend to do is cook a number of recipes from each, familiarising myself a bit more with the books, and then write up a review of each separately. Looks like I'll have to start with 500 Paleo Recipes, while I wait for my soon to be purchased slow cooker to be delivered...

December 15, 2005

As the year comes to an end we all start to make lists. In the world of cooking the lists of course focus on cookery books, restaurants and food experiences. Sadly enough, I have hardlly bought any cookery books at all this year since the problem with living in a rented room in a shared house is that 1) you don't have that much space to begin with and 2) you know that you soon(ish) will be moving out and the more stuff you have the more work it will be...

However, lately I have been made aware of this great magazine called The Week (online at www.theweek.co.uk) where all the latest news, editorials, movie releases and so on are collected and presented in a very easy to digest format. Tufte would be proud of these people I think. Think of it as the Cliff Notes of news media, updated weekly. Just what I need.

Best part is I don't even subscribe. I have this kind friend who has a subscription, and monday mornings I go to her place, have a cuppa and a chat, and as I leave she gives me the latest issue. Brilliant start of the week, my friend B and The Week is. Offline P2P document sharing, how cool is that?

So anyway. Lists. In the issue I got this Monday The Week has collected nine of the best cookery books of 2005, as they have been presented by various magazines and web sites. I am not going to list them all, that would be like what, theft... But I will mention the two I found the most interesting and that I really would love to buy myself.

Top of the list, mine as well as The Week's, is The Silver Spoon by various contributors. This has been the best selling cookery book in Italy for the past 50 years, but it is not until now that it has been made available in English!

With the best of Italian regional cooking represented, this has been a traditional gift to newly married women. Very big (I like big books) with 1,250 pages and over 2,000 recipes this is quite a volume. Recipes are arranged by ingredients, a property of a cookery book that I certainly like!

Moving on in the list, the next book that caught my eye was Arabesque by Claudia Roden. Cover looks lovely, it really makes me want to dive in. Recipes are collected from Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey and according to the review this "is easily one of the most inspiring books of the year".

Sounds good. Real good.

Since I started cooking more, and reading a lot about cooking, I have found that there are more people than me in the world that actually read cookery books, from start to finish. Going over lists of ingredients, carefully studying series of photos, trying to sense in my mind what a certain combination of spices would taste like...

What I also really like is cookery books where the recipes are tied in to more or less a story, or the author's memories. That makes me a bit interested in a third book on the list, Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey.

Labelled as an "evocative memoir" the books is not only a collection of recipes based on the author's background from growing up in Delhi, they are all also linked to memories of dinners, lunches, weddings and picnics.

October 19, 2005

Currently I am reading "Don't eat this book" by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made the movie "Super size me". Quite a fascinating and horrifying read. As anyone who saw the movie can guess it is all about how fast food in general and McDonalds in particular contribute to the world wide spreading epidemic of obesity around the world. We as a species get fatter every year, and instead of doing something about it we seem to dive deeper into our junkie hole of sugars, carbohydrates, trans fats and all the other stuff that is so good and tasty in moderation but slowly killing you in excess.

Sure, a little pleasure in your life now and then is well needed. Like my friend Eliott once said, "Everything is good in moderation, even excess". We really need to start pacing ourselves when it comes to food however, we are well past the boundaries of what can be called moderated excess.

Today I received an email, one of those witty ones that circulate among friends and friends of friends around the Internet forever (they are a bit like messages in bottles, bobbing around across the digital ocean...) with arguments in a Q&A format explaining in a very rational way why working out is bad for you.

One of the arguments caught my eye (thanks Anders for pointing that out):

Q: Is swimming good for your figure? A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

I laughed a bit, and then it struck me! This means something! I felt like the guy in "Close encounters of the third kind", when he sits in front of his mashed potatoes and starts shaping an odd looking mountain on his plate...

We all know about global warming. Be it true or not, the theory goes that because of our excessive use of the planet's resources (another excess we need to moderate by the way...) we are screwing up the weather and slowly melting our polar caps. Water levels in our oceans are rising, and fifty to a hundred six to fifteen years from now (revised this after some pretty shocking reports, I am getting quite concerned even though this text may not convey that very well), much of what we call home will be part of the rather boring and so very wet ocean floor.

Which creatures are not only mammals, but also well suited for life in cold and deep waters? Whales. They are also quite intelligent, care about their offspring and even (as Dory in "Finding Nemo" so amusingly taught us, thanks Disney for the educational value of your movies!) have a language of sorts allowing them to communicate over vast distances of dark and cold ocean waters!

Starting to see it?

Stop being scared of the obesity epidemic! It is nature's own way of adapting us as a species to the self inflicted consequences of global warming! Mother Nature, Gaia if you so will, comes to our rescue. With a really thick layer of fat around our bodies, and great floating skills thanks to the lower density of fat compared to muscles, we will be able to survive the rising waters and adapt to our new ever bluer planet.

But what about the health problems, I hear you say, what about the coronaries, the clogged up arteries, the back and knee problems? Not a problem! Once we are all submerged in Earth's great floatation tank we won't put the same physical strain on our bodies hence the risks of being fat will basically go away!

Smart woman, our Gaia, she has clearly thought this through well. Surely The Flying Spaghetti Monster is in on this somewhere, but I have yet to figure that part out.

Next thing you'll see are reports about obese people developing gills. Mark my words, we have a bright future ahead of us as the ruling sea creatures of this beautiful (and clever!) planet!

June 09, 2005

The religious fellows over at Westminster Abbey apparently are sick and tired of getting questions about The Da Vinci Code, since they have "armed their marshals with leaflets to tell tourists exactly what the novel got wrong. Filming on location for the upcoming movie is totally out of the question.

Among the arguments of what Dan Brown got wrong I especially like this one:

"Relies on apocryphal Gnostic texts which had been excluded from the biblical canon because they were imaginative."

Yes, of course. And I think that should be interpreted as "excluded from the approved propaganda since they didn't coincide with our goal of world wide male domination."